


Vanilla Dare

by wisdomeagle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Ice Cream, Post-Chosen, Recently Eighteen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-02
Updated: 2005-01-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:30:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4704515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before everything changes, everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vanilla Dare

"Okay, your turn," Dawn said, spinning on her stool. "Truth or dare?"

"Another round? I'm actually getting ready to turn in. Big day tomorrow, seeing everyone again. I need to clean up, and get the other guest rooms livable..."

"Hey, it's cool," Dawn replied. "I'll just... entertain myself."

"You know," said Xander, "two years ago, that would have been a clear sign that you were planning to sneak out. Should I be worried?"

"Nuh uh. I'm way more mature now," Dawn said, grabbing the glasses from the breakfast bar and waltzing over to the sink. "See? Even doing dishes now."

Xander smiled, "Attagirl. You know, I don't know if even Buffy can wash dishes with the same vigor you do."

"Uh, thanks, I guess," said Dawn, squeezing soap onto a blue sponge. "Is it just me, or does using sponges kinda bother you? It's like you're actually taking Spongebob Squarepants and you know, rubbing him against your plates and glasses."

"I'd never looked at it that way, and I'm beginning to be kind of glad I hadn't." Xander rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. "I could buy you a brillo if that would help."

"Nah, I'll deal. You just go to bed, and I'll take care of everything."

Xander shook his head, kissed Dawn's forehead, and wandered purposefully (if such a thing were possible) into the converted den he was using as his bedroom. As he stripped down to his boxer shorts, it occurred to him, and not for the first time, that his life was not quite normal.

Of all the duties that being the Slayer's best friend entailed, he'd always enjoyed babysitting her little sister more than, oh say, digging up graves, cleaning up demon goo, researching demons, or, just for instance, tracking down all her new Slayer pals. But babysitting Dawn was now more like his life's work, at least till she finished her last year of high school, which would be in just under a month. 

The thing was, he didn't think of it as babysitting, or even parenting, like it was supposed to be. Just like a really prolonged slumber party.

With a teenaged girl who was in fact Recently Eighteen and thus Fully Legal.

It really bothered Xander that he even had these thoughts, especially since he had to face Buffy and Willow and a houseful of brand-new Slayers tomorrow. He hadn't seen Buffy since she'd dumped Dawn on his doorstep almost a year earlier, muttered something about LA and an apocalypse, and left.

He buried his face in his pillow, but he couldn't sleep. The world was a funny, funny place.

~~~~

The truest evil in all the world, thought Dawn, was spaghetti sauce. Scrub and scrub and scrub, and it just wouldn't come off the dinnerware. Possibly because they'd waited until they were all out of clean dishes to attempt to wash the dirty ones, but Dawn still thought evil was involved somehow. Evil spaghetti sauce demons, with the amazing power of stickiness and grossness. Although, come to think of it, most demons had those powers.

It wasn't the sticky and gross demons that wigged her, though. It was the normal ones: the guys in her sixth period who made creepy remarks about her boobs, and her French teacher, who had never, ever spoken a word of English, ever, but who didn't scruple to say, "Dawn est un fille très intelligente, mais elle ne travaille pas dans cette classe," and give her a solid C, the worst grade she'd ever gotten. Buffy had warned her about the everyday demons, but she still couldn't believe it.

There was no hellmouth here. There was no mystical convergence, no vampire feeding ground, and there was only one graveyard in town, and it was way out near the city limits. Students never went there on dates. Her friend Christina had never seen a corpse.

Dawn remembered seeing her first dead body when she was eleven, and her best friend's brother had died. Things like that had happened in Sunnydale. Things like that never happened here.

She scrubbed harder; she knew Buffy would be there in the morning, and Buffy would want to see clean plates and freshly scrubbed Dawn and probably would be upset about the whole report card thing, and all those A's she hadn't gotten. Willow would be there, and would want to talk about SAT prep and would ask her about boys, which she used to think was way the coolest but now was kind of embarrassing.

The truth was, she didn't want any of them there tomorrow. It would break the spell of her and Xander living alone together, playing stupid games and never washing dishes and her pretending that he wasn't supposed to be a parent substitute but was actually, like, a friend. Like, a boyfriend.

Christina, who threw a party about once a week, was convinced that Xander was Dawn's way hot older brother, and she was constantly inviting herself over to sneak a peek at him, which actually made Dwan a little jealous, except she usually had him all to herself. When he got home from work, Dawn would bring him a beer, carefully sipping the foam off the top, and then stand behind his comfy armchair, trying to get up the nerve to give him a neckrub.

The spaghetti stain was getting smaller. Hard work and elbow grease can slay most demons, Xander once said. That, and a certain petite but powerful blonde Slayer.

Yeah, thought Dawn. Sure. There was a tiny twinge of jealousy, because she knew that Xander used to be in love with Buffy, long ago, but that was mostly in the past now. And so, she thought with more than a little guilt, was Anya. At first, on that long drive to Cleveland, she'd been all he thought about. He just stared out the greasy window of their schoolbus and looked grim and sad and unfixable. But that had changed.

He had spent all that time in Africa, finding himself, he said, not to mention finding three really excellent Slayers, and when Buffy dropped Dawn off at Xander's new apartment on her way to try to save Angel from the wreckage, he'd looked better, almost happy again.

Sometimes, he even looked at Dawn and smiled, and his smile reached his eyes, and if Dawn really squinted, it was the look he'd once reserved for Anya.

~~~~

Xander couldn't sleep. He glared at his alarm clock: two in the morning. An hour he'd seen far too often in his Scooby days, but preferred to sleep though now that he was earning an honest living and providing for a lady. Judging from the sounds coming from the kitchen, said little lady was still wide awake, and Xander figured that with the whole gang gathering there for a pow-wow, there was little chance either of them would sleep. He might as well help Dawn with the cleaning, make himself at least marginally useful.

"Xander!" she said with surprise when he dragged himself into the kitchen. "I'm fighting an evil stain demon on this plate. You wanna dry? Or did you just, you know, want a glass of water?"

"I'll dry," he said. "Can't sleep."

"I know," she said, practically jitterbugging. "I had like, three cups of coffee."

"Okay, that wasn't smart," he said.

"Yeah. But I'm like, so excited. And also kind of scared, you know? Like, seeing them again..."

"I know." Xander sighed. Seeing Buffy, seeing Willow, seeing all the little Slayers with their fancy weapons and their bright-eyed innocence.

"I wish they weren't coming," Dawn said suddenly. "I know that makes me like, a horrible sister, but I just want things to stay the same."

"Things change," Xander said, and felt another I am the grownup and thus you must listen to my wisdom speech coming on. He remembered how it had felt to have Giles lecture them and hated to do that to Dawn. So he just said, "I don't really want to see them, either."

"Because," Dawn continued unabashed, "it's like we've made this whole life for ourselves, right? With pizza on Fridays and the crew coming over for poker on Tuesdays and Christina and me having study parties, and none of it has to do with Buffy and her stuff. All my life, it's been Buffy's stuff and Buffy's demons and Buffy's stupid vampires. Fuck, I was _made_ because of Buff -- oh, sorry," she said, catching her swearword. "But it's like, my whole life, Buffy Buffy Buffy. And I've finally got a chance to be something that's just mine, and it feels _good_."

Xander nodded. "It's not easy being a sidekick."

"It's worse being a sister," she said.

Xander grabbed a dish out of her hand, half-cleaned, and placed it on the counter. Now's the time, he told himself. Now's the time to prove yourself, to say just the right thing and make it all okay again. And another part of him was saying, come on, Xan. Kiss her. She's eighteen, she's beautiful, and she's had a crush on you since before she even technically existed. His hand touched hers for far too long, and his heart started beating faster, and he was sweaty-palmed, high-school flunking Xander again for a minute.

"Why don't we give the chores a rest? There's a carton of French Vanilla in the freezer that's waiting for a special occasion."

Dawn grinned and spun around, opening the freezer and finding spoons with one swift motion that ended with her sitting at the counter, beckoning to Xander to join her.

"Wanna resume our game of Truth or Dare? Or is it Twenty Questions time?"

"When did you turn into Andrew?" he asked.

"Well, I did spend a lot of time with him in Rome," she said. "Maybe some of the coolness rubbed off on me."

"Rubbing was involved? Pseudo-father-figure Xander is not happy to hear about rubbing."

"Yeah? Well pseduo-daughter-figure Dawn thinks any rubbing that happens is none of Xander's business," she said, her mouth full of ice cream.

"What about friend Xander?"

"Well, if you're being friendly? Then let's just say that Andrew is totally on the bottom of the list of guys I'd even _consider_ rubbing, and God, this conversation is rendered way dirtier by the ice cream."

"Why's that? Does ice cream have some secret metaphorical meaning I missed out on by skipping most of tenth grade English to fight evil?"

"No, I just think it's kind of sexy. Because, well..." she trailed off.

"Because why?"

"None of your business."

"Tell me! You don't just start a story like that and not finish it. I'll even make it kosher. Truth or Dare, Dawn? Truth? Excellent. Why does ice cream turn you on?"

"Because you always used to bring ice cream when you came to babysit, and then when you were living with us, you always kept ice cream in the freezer," she said in a hurried whisper.

Xander could almost taste the vanilla ice cream melting into the fudge ripple he'd shared with Anya before... before they... then he looked up and Dawn was sort of frowning, like she was waiting for him -- of course. Like she was waiting for him to say something in response to the ice cream anecdote. 

"Ah," he said. "That's very... sweet of you."

~~~~

Dawn closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and tried to take it back. Obviously, she'd made a fool of herself. She'd been trying to be all grown up and mature so Xander would like her, and then she'd gone and reminded him of how he used to be her babysitter. She wanted to run down the hall to her room and curl up on her bed and wail, but she was a big girl now, and despite all the moaning and wailing Buffy had done over the years, Dawn was determined to be more mature than that.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm like, way over that now. Totally over. There's no underness to be had. Woah. Everything I say is all..."

"Turvy topsy? I know the feeling," Xander said. "Whenever I tried to ask out girls in high school -- and remember, it wasn't all that often, since cold, brutal rejection has never been something I've been fond of -- whenever I asked girls out my tongue would get tied in knots and I'd start to sweat profusely. I used up more deodorant that way than I did in all my years -- okay, days -- of swim team." 

Dawn couldn't help laughing, the way she always did when Xander was around. He put her at ease like no one else on the planet ever could. And he always, always treated her like a grown-up, even when she didn't deserve it.

"But I'm not asking anyone out," she said with a laugh. "At least, I don't think I am."

"I dunno, I think it's a bit late for going out." Her heart sunk; this was the part where the flirting stopped and the real rejection began. "Besides, we've got everything we need right here. Dimly lit room -- remind me to change the light bulb before Buffy gets here? -- beautiful girl, homely yet occasionally witty guy, and I hear ice cream is a real aphrodisiac."

Dawn could swear her heart actually stopped beating for a minute. When she could finally talk, she said, breathless, "Okay, are you actually, you know -- do you really want to? Because if you don't, that's totally cool, but if you do, like, right now? Really? With _me_?"

Xander nodded, and put down his spoon, and leaned across the table. Dawn knelt up on the spinny chair, careful not to fall over, pursed her lips and closed her eyes. Then Xander kissed her, a sweet, vanilla kiss without too much tongue, which was disappointing, but Dawn figured they had a whole carton of ice cream; they had plenty of time for tongue later. And it was a very nice kiss; Xander was a much, much better kisser than any of the guys at her high school.

"Well," she said, when Xander broke the kiss. "That was nice."

"Very nice," Xander agreed, smiling at her. "But Dawn?"

"What?"

"What the heck are we going to tell Buffy?"

"I guess we have two choices. We could put away the ice cream, finish the dishes, and tell Buffy nothing because there's nothing to tell, or...."

She lowered her eyelids flirtatiously.

"Door number B," Xander said. "Definitely door number B."


End file.
